Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper reports the results of a simple questionnaire given to 141 active members of Cocaine Anonymous at over a half-dozen distinct meeting groups for the purpose of gauging differences in individual time discounts. Starting with the idea that addicts are notably `impatient’ with respect to rewards, we offer evidence in support of the argument that, among the impacts of a 12-step recovery program such as CA on individual motives, discounts vary endogenously across (and by implication, within) recovering addicts as a function of the duration of their sobriety. Although our analysis is also consistent with the hypothesis that addicts with longer time horizons are more likely to remain in a drug rehabilitation program, our data is also consistent with the hypothesis that regular participation impacts `impatience’ and has its greatest effect with regular (at least once weekly) attendance over a period of five or more years. This study, then, can be viewed as a call for additional research in which the effects of self-selection and endogenous time preference change are sorted out.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: There are two predominant modes for examining environmental regulation, which can be thought of as the economic and the ecological, or the anthropocentric and the ecocentric. These modes inform two literatures on international environmental politics that seem largely to speak past each other. But even though the anthropocentric mode, based on the ideas of environmental economics, presents itself as a self-sufficient mode of analysis for international environmental politics, it is not. It requires an implicit ecocentric underpinning in order to generate any but the most short-term forms of environmental management. This paper will both present the logic behind this assertion, and discuss its implications.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Although many decisions involve a stream of payoffs over time, political scientists have given little attention to how actors make the required tradeoffs between present and future payoffs, other than applying the standard exponential discounting model from economics. After summarizing the basic model, we identify some of its leading behavioral anomalies – declining discount rates; preference reversals; higher discount rates for smaller payoffs than for larger payoffs, and for gains than for losses; framing effects based on expectations; and a preference for ascending rather than descending sequences. We examine the leading alternative models of discounting, and then apply a “quasi-hyperbolic model” to the problem of cooperation in iterated prisoner’s dilemma games. We demonstrate that if actors display the widely observed tendency to highly discount the immediate future, then cooperation in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma game is more difficult than Axelrod (1984) suggests.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The present study investigated the effects of individual rational processing tendency and a commercial persuasive message’s discounting cue on participants’ attitude toward juice consumption over time. A 2 (attitude changes between 4 weeks) × 2 (high/low rationality) × 2 (persuasive messages with/without discounting cues) mixed factorial design was employed to examine relative sleeper effects. Results revealed the interaction effect of high-rationality and discounting cue on attitude change over time. Applications on health promotions are suggested.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: (to be uploaded)